WEST BANK: Many Palestinians would agree to
Israeli citizenship

July 26, 2010 | 8:56am

A poll on the Palestinian Ma’an news
website that ended Monday showed that more than 56% of Palestinians
support a former Israeli defense minister's idea to annex the West
Bank and grant Israeli citizenship to its 2.5 million residents.

For Moshe Arens, the former defense minister, Israel has less to
lose from incorporating the West Bank and its
population than any other solution for the decades-long
Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Apparently, Arens' idea seems to have struck a chord among
Palestinians. What the poll indicates is that a slim majority of
Palestinians in the occupied territories have given up on the idea of
two states -- Israel and Palestine -- living side by side in peace
and security. Many now prefer the one-state solution, which means
Israel would incorporate the remaining parts of historic Palestine,
excluding the Gaza Strip, which Arens seems to have ignored.

However, the Palestinians’ reasoning for their
decision is totally different from that of Arens, a right-wing Israeli
politician. Whereas Arens dismisses the general Israeli concern that
granting West Bank Palestinians Israeli citizenship would change the
demographic and Jewish structure of Israel, Palestinians believe they
would eventually become a majority in Israel in light of their higher
birth rate, which means they could eventually take control through
democratic and peaceful means.

The idea of a one-state solution gradually has been gaining Palestinian
support as the Oslo process, started in 1993, has failed to bring about
an independent state for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip. Strong
advocates of the two-states idea also now are talking about one
state. Recently, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas suggested the
one-state solution if negotiations to bring about an independent state
failed.

The Ma’an poll, although not very scientific, reflects the general
Palestinian mood in the occupied territories after efforts to give them
a state have stalled and hopes pinned on the Obama administration have
faded. Palestinians still carry the one card that can either make or
break peace in the Middle East: their presence on the land. Israel will
have to deal with that reality sooner or later.